jam and other great and unsearchable things

I've been trying for days to write.  I don't know why a simple post about making jam is giving me such trouble.  Making jam, you say?  Yeppers, I'm a jammer now.  Why does this jamming feel so significant?  How many forms of the word jam can I use in one paragraph, jamnit?!

For one thing my new jamness means that I'm turning all domestic in my motherhood and old age (I'm on the cusp of being 30 for goodnessake!)  I bake banana bread, I cook like crazy, and I make jam.  It also means: I have no friends.  (I have friends in my heart, just not in actual real life.)  Not much on the agenda, so it's not much trouble fitting a three hour jam session into the schedule.  And also: I miss my Gram terribly.  The worst times are when I drive or stop by and no one is home, and I wish desperately that she was there to share a cup of tea and my troubles with.  I stand in the kitchen and note which things have changed, and which have stayed the same.  My grandmother, Gram's daughter, lives there now -- and I get mad, because she still has to work so hard, and she's never there to just be there and be Gram.  So I guess doing these simple tasks, like stirring jam bubbling in a pot and pouring it into jars (or gardening -- I'll get to that), connect me to her in a way that helps me feel a little bit better about all of it.

So I sat here {at my new principal's desk -- scored for free at the school and refinished and looking mighty serious and beautiful} for an hour the other night, trying to write about jamming.  Trying first to sort out the thousand thoughts clouding my brain -- trying in particular to disperse the dark, heavy ones menacing my mind lately.  Thoughts and feelings like this, what I did manage to write the other night:

I'm in the middle of the ocean swimming in all of my clothes, and I'm asking myself: Why did you think it would be a good idea to jump off the boat?  And why didn't you take off your jeans and boots and that heavy sweater?  The fact is, I've become exactly who I didn't think I wanted to be.  I've failed.  In so many ways.  Some of them, I know where I went wrong.  Others, I have ideas, but I honestly do not know.  And the worst feeling is: it's too late.  It's all done, there is so much I can't change, and I've pretty much screwed everything up.  At one time I really believed I was someone special, destined for something great, a part of God's plan.  And actually, I still believe that I was.  But then I ignored God's voice too many times and strayed off on my own path and now I'm way out here -- and I can bushwhack in the right direction, but I'll never reach the destination I was meant to.  And that is one dark, heavy feeling.  I think I am good at being a mom, and it's the most fulfilling role I've played.  But maybe that's the only thing I really am good at.

Since this is my online journal, for everyone to see, and since I'm not very good at putting my real feelings out there for others, I'm very tempted to delete that paragraph and move along, but I think that maybe... we all struggle with doubt and feelings of failure?  We all question whether the choices we've made, big or small, were the right ones.  Maybe we all feel a little (or a lot) overwhelmed by life at times.  Maybe just the fact that I'm pondering all this means that I'm closer to the right path than I think?  And maybe I just need to get out of my head and make some jam.

Life is throwing some big questions at me lately, and I've been frequently meditating on this scripture:

Not, "Call to me and I will tell you everything is okay and all of your troubles will disappear," but "Call to me and I will tell you great and unsearchable things."  Whatever they are.  (And by meditating I mean listening to it a lot on Spotify via Seeds Family Worship and taking the words to my heart.)

Some photos of our berrying at Gram's and jamming at home...

A pre-pick picnic:

Black caps.

Owen puts two or three berries into his bowl, then promptly eats them so that it's empty again.  

Bob is a little better at collecting them, but he and I shared a bucket and I suspect I would have filled it a lot faster if he wasn't sneaking handfuls into his mouth.

Red currants and blackcaps.

Currants on the bush.  We picked a lot, but the bushes were still full.  Then the next day the mama turkey and her babies found them and they were all gone.

Nuts and berries: the perfect snack.

Bobby was an excellent de-stemmer for the first batch of jam.

Owen, too, took berries from stems, but he ate them all.

Making jam turned out to be incredibly easy.  Just put the berries in a pot, mash, add sugar, heat on medium while stirring in the sugar, then heat on high, stirring frequently until the berries are seeming jammy (until you dip in your spoon and the last bit of liquid sheets off instead of dripping).  Then pour the jam into sterilized jars (boiled for five minutes).  I save my store bought jelly jars and lids because we use them as drinking glasses, but it also meant I had them on hand for this.  Not sure how long the jam will keep this way, but no matter for us: we eat pb&j like it's going out of style.  Mine came out a little thick, but not in a bad way.

You saw the finished jam in the jars above.  Here it is in action.

And, FYI, pb&j is even better with fresh hot jam.  Duh.

Weekend update

Sorry for my absence of late...  There's not a whole lot to report and I've been just not feeling it.  Like, all I feel like doing right now is going to bed.  I miss my Gram for one thing.  I'm feeling guilty at my lack of keeping in touch with all of my other grandparents, that's another thing. I've got photography work but don't feel like doing it.  I don't have a single gift prepared for Christmas (except I did pick up a dog bone and dish from the dollar store this weekend for Bob).  Blah, blah-dee blah.

Last night my loving hubby garbage disposaled this tiny little green glass cup that was from Gram's.  My special cup that I don't let Bob use because I am so afraid it will break and I won't have it anymore.  The special tiny cup that I used for countless bedtime milk and graham cracker and peanut butter snacks, that I used for my "champagne" on New Year's Eve.  This tiny little piece of glass that, whenever I needed to feel those memories I could get 'er from the cabinet and fill 'er up and hold in my hand this connection to this person who means so so much to me.  And it broke.  I screamed and cried and just totally lost it.  I've been feeling so weepy about Gram lately anyway -- it's been just over a year since she passed and this holiday season just rubs it in, you know?  So I think the glass breaking may have let some things bubble to the surface?  I don't know.  Today I went to the cemetery and cried and cried and pet and fluffed the teddy bears in the basket my grandmother has lovingly attached to the stone.  So that's that.  I know things are just things but sometimes even things really hurt to lose.

...

So.  That was all from last week.  Here we are this week and part of me wants to just delete all of the above because I sound like a big baby.  I went to church on Sunday with a heart heavy for the families of the shooting victims.  I was a little surprised by Pastor Jeff's comments.  Basically:  It took no time at all for the human race to produce a murderer -- Cain, who killed his own brother -- so why are we surprised?  And: Everyone is horrified because the victims were children, yet no one cares about the unborn children murdered every day.  Interesting.  A little insensitive maybe, but also true, no?

anyway...

A weekend update blog post is definitely in order because we got to see all three cousins last weekend!

On Friday night we had Chloe.  Some magic bullet-ized peas of Owen's were in a little bowl on the table and Chloe said, "Oh, is this guacamole?"  Which made me laugh really hard because it did not look the least bit like guacamole -- it had a baby spoon still sitting in it for goodness sake!  But... my mom was about to come over, and I was just thinking of what to put together for a little snack for her, so we thought, haha!  Let's freshen up these peas with some salt, pepper and lemon juice and toss them in a cuter serving bowl next to some chips.  A wonderful harmless hilarious practical joke.  Except we were just finishing putting it together when my mother came in, and we hadn't yet harnessed the giggles.  So she kept saying, "What are you laughing about?" as she ate chip after chip with "guacamole" until finally she stopped and said, "This doesn't taste like guacamole, it tastes like peas!"  My poor mother was starving and thinks I have the strangest sense of humor.  Sorry, mom... it was all in fun.

Saturday was Bailey's birthday party.  She's four!

It was a princess bowling extravaganza.

Complete with rad shoes and a real princess.

Bailey had a blast with all her friends and masterfully cut up her own cake.

Mason and Bobby ate a lot of frosting.

Saturday night we swapped Chloe for Mason.  He slept in Bobby's room, on the floor next to the bed we moved in there for him.  Boy rolls out of bed within five minutes of being asleep.

And Sunday we walked out into the woods behind our house to find a Christmas tree.

Bob the goof walks right up to this beaver-chewed stump and starts pretending to saw it down.  "I found the perfect Twissmas twee.  Won't this look beautiful in our house?"

We went with this little guy below.  We're hoping to replant him at Gram's... Wouldn't it be cool to watch it grow year after year, and be able to show the kids, this was Owie's first Christmas tree?

A free sample of cuteness for you: my dear little midge hugging his beloved cousin.

And -- bonus! -- I even got new photos of my niece and nephew.  I don't see these faces nearly enough for my liking.  I miss them bad, and I worry about them.  I need you two back, and soon!



Sorry this post is close to being a novel.  That's what happens when I'm MIA for so long.

Six days to go.  We're excited around here.  Happy happy holidaying!

happy leap day

After watching 30 Rock last week, I had big plans for making ben dress up as leap day william and living it up this february 29.  But regular life things just took priority I guess... and living it up amounted to a trip to walmart and an extra large slice of cheesecake tonight after the babies were asleep.

In other news...

photo by bob

Cha-lazy-eye is back.  It's killing me.  (Actual ailment: chalazion -- a blocked gland in my eyelid.  I think it's from the mom hormones.  Not the worst thing in the world.  An annoyance.)

I had one when Bobby was born; it appeared at the exact same time he did, so I liked to unaffectionately refer to it as his twin.

We were staying at Gram's one weekend -- I guess it must have been Thanksgiving, the Thanksgiving before her stroke -- and I'd been suffering the thing for weeks, and Gram was very concerned about it.  I kept putting warm washcloths on my eye, like I had been all along, per doctor's orders.

Gram just would not stop looking at it.  "Well, by gully."  And then she told me I should put my tea bag on it.  (We drink a lot of tea at Gram's.)  We all laughed but then she wasn't really joking.  So I tried it a couple of times that night.  And she noticed the effects immediately.  The next morning she insisted, "Well it's looking better isn't it?"  I really didn't think so... but I was amused and encouraged by her optimism nonetheless.

I kept up with the tea bag treatment and sure enough, it seemed to work; I did heal.

So now I'm back at it.  Tea-baggin myself all the time.  And shedding a couple of tears because I just truly miss my Gram.  I miss her input in my life.  I miss her ridiculously hilarious and ridiculously amazing advice that did always turn out to be just what I needed.

And for your leap day present, my favorite leap day pics...

Happy leap day, all.

Happy heart, sad vagina

I might not get too much written tonight.  There is an amazingly perfect handsomely adorable newborn on my lap and I cannot stop kissing him long enough to type a full sentence.  Newborns are magical miracle healing packs.  Hold close at all times for maximum effect.  And I need the maximum effect, because my vagina is very sad.  But my heart is so so happy.

Our baby Owen has finally arrived.  Here's the story.

Friday was a regular day pretty much the same as the four preceding it.  Bob practiced his diaper changing in anticipation of baby brother's arrival.

Here's the last photo taken of Bob as an only child.  (Man I need to give that boy another haircut.)

I put Bobby to bed, and shortly thereafter started feeling some contractions.  We started timing them around 10:00 -- anywhere from 3-10 minutes apart for the next hour or two, not too intense. Before long the contractions were coming every three minutes and I was starting to feel them a bit.  I called my mom to come over and Ben and I were on our way to the hospital around 1am.  Things progressed quickly from this...

to this...

It all happened way too quickly for any kind of drugs, and let me just say that I pretty much handled it like a champ.  I dropped just one f-bomb and let out just a couple of yells and other than that I was calm cool and collected.  Or something close to it.  Can't you just see the joy on my face when the 7 pound, 14 ouncer popped out at 3:06 am?

When I first saw my boy I made a loving remark about his appearance resembling a homely purple troll... lucky for him he's gotten cuter every minute since he was born.  Here he is: Owen Clarke Burgess.

Between the two, let's be honest, labor with an epidural is a lot more fun than labor without one -- but still I'm glad I was forced to go "natural" the second time around.  It was a totally different experience.  This time I felt much more in tune with what was happening with my body; I really felt where the baby was coming from and what I was doing to push him out.  ("Poop that baby out!" the doctor kept yelling.)  But when I had the epidural I felt much more in tune with everything else that was happening; I felt more present in the room because I didn't have to focus solely on my pain.  Bobby's head I watched emerge; Owen's head I reached down and felt.  The best part about the epidural I'd say is that when it's all over you can just be happy holding your new baby, completely unaware of all that's going on down below.  This time around I felt it all, and I felt terrible for Owen because I kept wincing at the pain and convulsing with the shivers and maybe using a four letter word or two.

But despite all that, it was perfect.  What is more perfect than finally meeting your healthy newborn babe face to face?

Nothing, that's what.

The hospital stay was nice and relaxing -- we had a quiet room at the end of the hall and all the nurses were wonderful.  Bob was super excited to wear his new big brother shirt and to give Owen his gift -- a blankie and two suckies.  He introduced himself to his baby brother, and then he basically just wanted to terrorize the hospital room -- playing under the bed, trying to use the phone, touching the soiled linen bag...

He liked climbing up onto the bed with Owen and me but had trouble being as calm and gentle as he needed to be.

A "tiny circle" of ice cream is good for ten minutes of peace, as long as you don't mind the chocolate mess.



Owen was a little angel in the hospital.  We heard a lot of crying coming from next door but our baby hardly made a peep.  Except, that is, when they strapped him down for his circumcision -- he screamed and puked and pooped all over the place and the twenty year old obstetrician who did the dirty deed seemed very concerned, but my question is, doesn't every poor baby boy react that way?

I spent some time alone with Owen while Ben went home to put Bob down for naps and bedtime.  Bedtime was the hard one for me.  Ben and Bob and Mom and Big Gram were all visiting, and then they all left, and even though I had a little cherub for company, I got pretty lonely pretty quick.  Being in that hospital room all alone made me miss my Gram so much.  I thought about how she must have felt when we all went home for the night.  To make matters worse there was absolutely nothing on tv other than Keeping Up Appearances, which I only watch with Gram.  So I watched it, and let myself be sad a little.  I was a little weepy also because it was the first night of bob's life that I wasn't there to put him to bed.  And even though I knew we could both handle it, and even though I know I have plenty of love to go around, my heart broke a little bit because our special relationship of mother and only son had ended.  Things will be different from now on.  Different, but still amazingly wonderful.  To distract myself from all my sad thoughts I focused on the new beauty in my life and had a little hospital basinette photo shoot.

Less than a day old.  What preciousness.

This little pup is the best sleeper so far.

Our attempts at a family photo the next day...

Owen and I got some rest while we waited the requisite four hours after his circumcision and Ben and Bob went home for naptime.  Then we watched the end of the Patriots game (lucky timing for Ben since we don't have cable at home) and I ate some lemon dill salmon and we went home with our new little boy.

Bob was waiting with Grandmother when we got home.  He gave Owen a warm welcome, running up and covering his face with his blankie and then trying to get me to open up the suckies.  After Owen was out of his car seat Bob said, "Tan I hold him?"  Music to mom and dad's ears.

Here's the face that sums up how I feel and the inspiration for the title of this post -- happy heart, sad vagina.  I popped a suture or two after I got home and let's just say, things haven't been so pleasant since then.  At least not in my netherregions.

I've got lots more photos of course, but that should hold you all over for now, right?

We're feeling happy and blessed.  All of us except my va-jay-jay that is.